In a competitive sales market, many independent sales organizations will complete for the same sales “leads”. These leads represent the names and contact information of individuals or organizations that may be interested in their products or services. One of the newest and most popular forms of sales lead is the “Internet Lead”; these leads come from websites offering to give consumers competing quotes from companies for the product or service that the customer is interested in. The leads are then sold to the sales organizations for what is usually a fixed fee and delivered electronically, often via email. One of the first examples of this model is from lendingtree.com® who offers to give consumers competing quotes for loans from up to four banks if they submit an online financing application. What lendingtree.com and similar organizations actually do is simply sell all the information collected to mortgage brokers based on the highest bidder for that consumer's preferred loan type and geographic location. Another example, in the insurance industry, is from NetQuote.com®. Its business model is virtually identical to that of lending tree's, except it deals in leads for insurance quotes. There are numerous other entities that provide Internet leads in numerous industries. For a smaller sales organization, it will often buy from one or two lead sources and simply use the online tools available to it from those lead providers. It will also usually have its leads delivered by email. Larger organizations may buy from one or more providers and may also have the leads delivered directly to an in-house data management system, e.g., customer relationship management (CRM), using an Application Programming Interface (API). The actual network protocol or data format for this transmission varies but will commonly resemble XML posted over HTTP(s). There are several problems with prior art lead referral systems that receive leads from multiple sources (providers) and distribute them to multiple sales representatives via whatever means possible for follow-up and prosecution of the leads. The term representative as used in this application not only applies to sales representatives, but to any individual or entity who uses the lead to follow-up and identify potential recipients for the goods, services or opportunities being offered. The representatives may all be employed by the same entity, or may be competing against each other. The representatives may be affiliated with a single provider of the leads or may receive leads from many different lead providers. The representative may also be a separate sales entity unrelated to the processor or provider of the sales leads.
One problem in prior art systems is the duplication of leads received from the lead providers. In a competitive industry, many lead providers buy-and-sell leads amongst themselves and resell them to sales organizations in accordance with existing contracts. While their internal exchange protocols make every effort to prevent the selling of duplicated leads to a single sales organization or to multiple independent “agents” of a single parent organization, the prior art systems are imperfect and duplication is commonplace.
Another problem is the identification of “bad” leads. It's not uncommon for individuals to volunteer false information on these “get a quote” websites, hoping simply to receive an automated and impersonal quote response. This supplying of false information results in “bad leads” which are unusable to an actual salesperson to follow-up on. Prior art systems do not adequately identify bad leads.
Another problem with prior art systems is the identification of unwanted leads. While most lead provider request certain criteria and “profile” information from the sales organizations when activating their account, this information is often generic and not specifically tailored to the individual clients needs. This results in the sales organization receiving and being charged for leads they don't actually want.
For example an insurance agent may desire to only provide quotes to drivers with very clean driving records. However, the lead provider may not be able to identify drivers who are unsuitable, e.g., drivers with multiple DUIs. Thus, while the name and contact information on a leads may be correct, the lead is of no use to the agent as he/she cannot give this individual a quote or gain any business from it.
Yet another common problem for larger organizations is the distribution of leads identifying existing customers. This is especially problematic in organizations with independent contractor sales representatives who receive ongoing commissions for maintaining customer relationships. Continuing with the insurance company example, “Big Mutual Insurance” needs a way to ensure that if it purchases a lead that is already a policy holder, it can route that lead to the independent agent who manages that policy or it may be in violation of that agent's contract for sending her client to competing agent.
Another problem is the fair distribution of the leads in the sales organization. When a large company wants to purchase leads and distribute them to their independent representative, it must first identify which representatives may be eligible to receive the lead. The process of identifying eligible sales representatives is multi-faceted and typically has been handled manually in prior art systems. In addition, once the eligible representatives are identified, prior art systems do not provide an automated solution for fairly distributing the leads among the eligible representatives.
Prior art systems do not provide a comprehensive solution that addresses each of the problems identified above. There are some individual components that are directed to some of the problems above, but they are not specifically tailored to the entire Internet lead life cycle from generation through filtering, distribution and routing as described in the present application.